The popularity of social media websites or portals, such as Facebook®, Twitter®, LinkedIn®, MySpace®, Buzz®, and others has increased markedly in recent years, compelling marketers and advertisers to analyze the potential of these channels for different types of marketing and advertising. These portals not only provide a platform for individual users to interact, but also present organizations, groups, and communities with potential marketing tools, such as Facebook® pages, or Twitter® handles relating to their products or services, enabling marketers to interact with followers, fans, employees, or consumers/members. Marketers can post messages or advertisements on these social media systems as a way to advertise outside of traditional marketing channels. Members, in turn, can respond by clicking on embedded URLs (uniform resource locators), replying to the messages, starting posts based on the messages, or performing other site-specific functions. Further, marketers can embed an organization-specific or campaign-specific URL (webpage address) within the messages, driving users and web traffic to a separate web site.
Even though viral marketing through these social media systems can prove profitable for organizations in terms of additional media coverage, increased click-through rates, greater brand awareness, timely updates, etc., organizations may face difficulties in maintaining and managing more than one marketing campaign or program on an ongoing basis. As referred to herein (and described in greater detail below), a “marketing program” relates to an advertising theme, such as a series of advertisements or messages around a certain time of year (e.g., fall, holiday, summer), certain dates (e.g., Halloween, Christmas, Mother's Day), or certain themes (e.g., back to school, the start of a sporting season). Further, marketing programs may relate generally to a specific marketer, product, or group of products offered by a particular marketer. For example, large corporations with hundreds of different product lines and operations spread worldwide may create separate marketing programs on multiple social media systems for each product line or locality, amounting to thousands of marketing programs. For these corporations, the task of updating and managing these marketing programs with new advertising content on a regular basis can become colossal. Individually updating marketing programs may require efforts from a large number of people.
Further, most social networking systems set their own message formats, rules, and instructions, and use their own technology protocols. This makes it not only difficult but a practical impossibility for marketers to remember the rules associated with the programs and to format the messages accordingly. Specifically there currently exists no effective, streamlined way to insert application media into messages created for the purpose of marketing on social media systems. For example, because most social media systems have strict protocols for uploading content on social media websites, it is practically impossible to effectively generate complex and interactive application media content as well insert such content into messages created for the purpose of marketing on social media systems. As referred to herein, “application media” generally refers to media content with which a user (such as a member of a social media system) may interact. Examples of application media include online quizzes, polls, electronic games, and other media types in which a user may view information relating to the application media, provide information to or interact with the media, and view subsequent or additional content in connection with the media. For example, in the case of a poll, a social media system member may view poll questions, select a particular answer, and view poll results provided by other members. Application media may generally be contrasted with conventional multimedia content, such as videos, audio files, static graphic images, and the like, because such multimedia content does not enable rich interaction between the content and an end user (member). It will be understood and appreciated, however, that some forms of multimedia that enable dynamic user interaction may also be classified as application media.
Additionally, the fact that marketing data, metrics, and other data are on multiple social media platforms makes analysis cumbersome and difficult. Particularly, marketers may find it practically impossible to analyze the success or acceptance of a particular message, or to compare one message or marketing program with another. Currently, no existing service effectively assists marketers and advertisers in managing the marketing programs spread over multiple social media systems.
Therefore, a long-felt but unresolved need exists for a system or method that manages multiple marketing programs on multiple social networking systems. There remains a further need for a system or method that is simple to implement, does not require extensive data analysis, and can be easily configured according to the marketer's or user's preferences to manage any number of marketing programs. There exists yet a further need for a system that enables creation and delivery of messages created for the purpose of marketing on social media systems, wherein the message includes application media or multimedia content.